SK Telecom’s (NYSE: SKM) President & CEO Ha Sung-Min today unveiled the company’s new strategic directions for 2011 as the company gears up for stronger growth, both in the Korean and international markets.

The new plans will focus on "Speed, Openness and Collaboration", and involve making SK Telecom a more agile and speedier organization in order to strengthen its market leadership as well as capture more opportunities in new sectors through open collaboration with partners. In addition, SK Telecom plans to open up more of its breakthrough technologies to the developer community, and at the same time seek more partnerships, especially in emerging areas such as NFC and Cloud Computing.

"The power of SK Telecom comes from its young, agile organization. Armed with a speedier organization, we will further solidify our market leadership in the fixed-mobile convergence, enhance our networks for increased data traffic, as well as release differentiated data services and expand our smartphone line-up," said Ha.

Ha also emphasized the importance of openness and collaboration. "We are no longer living in an era where a company alone can grow and thrive in the ICT industry. Now it is imperative that the whole industry achieve co-growth through the spirit of openness and collaboration," he said. 

■ Realizing success with young, speedy organization

 "SK Telecom will first focus on making speedy decisions and become the fastest in the industry to produce tangible results in customer service and network competition," Ha said.

SK Telecom plans to launch commercial LTE service in Seoul in the third quarter of this year, thereby opening a new era of 4G mobile technologies. Building on its competitive edge in 3G networks, the company will also make heavy investments in high-speed Wi-Fi and data femtocell.

SK Telecom also created a new Platform Business organization, which aims to boost the company’s growing platform business in parallel with the network operating business

■ Key to growth: "Openness" and "Collaboration"

Stressing the importance of openness and collaboration, Ha said: "The only way for companies in the ICT industry to succeed in this era of hyper-competition is to pursue co-growth by engaging in open collaboration."

Last year, SK Telecom made it a goal to become a global platform company by opening up base technologies for its key platforms. The company shared APIs of its SNS, LBS and messaging service with external developers, thereby allowing them to create innovative services. In line with this, the company will now make stronger efforts to open APIs of its competitive services so as to create a friendlier environment for developers.

Furthermore, with the spirit of openness and collaboration, SK Telecom also plans to work together with its competitors to promote new growth areas like NFC and Cloud Computing by co-developing technologies and making joint investments in infrastructure.

■ Producing tangible results in the overseas markets

Ha said, "This year marks the beginning of our full-fledged efforts in the platform business. We will make an all-out effort to strengthen our execution capability to generate tangible results in this field. In line with this, we will constantly expand the scope of the platform business by developing new platforms like Smart TV and connecting to existing ones such as multi screen video services."

As for the company’s global business, Ha said: "SK Telecom will add momentum to its IPE business and advance into the overseas markets with services including Smart Office, Smart CEO, MIV (Mobile In Vehicle) and smart grid. In addition, the company will promote globalization of T-Store, aiming for solid results within the first half of 2011."

In addition, So Jin-Woo, President of Platform Business and Co-CEO of SK Telecom said, "Growth of and competition in the future global market will not be determined by a single company but by the whole ecosystem. SK Telecom will make strenuous efforts to expand this ecosystem through forward-looking, innovative open collaboration".